Sin Killer

by Larry McMurtry

  He reached for the mirror, meaning to smash it and end her preening, but Tasmin jerked the small glass away.

  “This is my mirror—I’m prepared to be beaten rather than surrender it,” Tasmin said. “Of course there’s vanity in me—and in you, too. You’re rather vain about the way your beard is trimmed.”

  “I wasn’t until I met you,” Jim replied.

  “I see—so your vanity is my fault too,” Tasmin said. “You seem to think everything is my fault.”

  Jim Snow didn’t answer. There was still hostility in his look, so much hostility that Tasmin felt rather despairing; and yet she was determined, now that the die was cast, to speak her mind.

  “I’m human, I’m fallible, I admit it,” she said, staring straight ahead. “I will slip in my language—now and then I may even commit worse sins. There is, I believe, a Christian virtue called forgiveness—I guess it isn’t in the part of the Holy Book you possess—perhaps you tore the forgiveness pages out to make our campfires.”

  Jim said nothing. As usual, he felt at a terrible disadvantage. He could not possibly speak as well as his wife. He had slapped her hard and yet it had not knocked the vanity out of her, or curbed her rebellious spirit. The Book said a wife should be submissive, and yet Tasmin, his wife, was defiant.

  “There’s forgiveness, I guess, but there’s punishment too,” he said, without confidence.

  “I see,” Tasmin said. “You like the punishment parts best—I suppose that’s why you’re called the Sin Killer.”

  Jim’s eyes were softening a little, and yet the prospect of a return to their easy union still seemed distant and bleak.

  “I don’t want to get slapped every time I’m vexed and speak out,” she said. “Somehow you’ve become convinced that it’s your duty to punish sinners— which can make it hard on a wife—though I do think mostly I make a decent wife.”

  Jim didn’t answer. He wished Tasmin could just be silent, and not always be spilling words out of her mouth at such a rate. Lengthy talk just made it harder for him hold the simple articles of faith in his mind, the faith that Preacher Cockerell had beaten into him at an early age. Preacher Cockerell never hesitated: he took the horsehide whip to his own wife and children as readily as he took it to Jim. Sin was to be driven out and violence was the way to drive it. Sin was also constant; violence had to be constant too. Preacher Cockerell whipped in the morning, whipped in the noontide, whipped at night; when members of his congregation sent their unruly young to him, he whipped them too. Jim grew up fearing the whip but not doubting the justice. Before the morning meal and the evening, Preacher Cockerell read from the Holy Book, terrible passages about punishment, sin, hell, Lot’s wife, the whore of Babylon, wars and floods and banishment, all the punishments that man deserved because of his sinful nature. Preacher Cockerell even whipped himself, for he had fallen into adultery with the wife of Deacon Sylvester. For such a sin even the whippings had not been enough, so Jehovah sent the lightning bolt that fried Preacher Cockerell and turned him black; the same lightning bolt threw Maudey Cockerell and Jim Snow aside as if they were chaff from the grain. For three days Jim lay unmoving; he seemed to float in red water, though there was no water where he was. Even the Kaw was low that year. Maudey Cockerell lived, but her mind died, destroyed by the heavenly flash. From that time on Jim had felt it was his duty to punish sin, whenever he met it in the violent men of the West, red or white; the Indians feared him because of the ferocity of his attacks. He was particularly feared by the medicine men, because it was the heresy of their spells and potions that angered him most.

  But he was not in battle with heathen savages now; he was with Tasmin, his wife, a woman who had just carelessly taken the Lord’s name in vain. Her quarrelsome words had not really been checked, not even by the sharp blow he had struck her. His Ute wives, receiving such a blow, would have immediately ceased their disputes; they would have known to be quiet. But Tasmin was no Ute—she could outtalk him, make him feel a fool if he even tried to justify his behavior by reference to the Holy Book. Both slaps had shocked her; but not enough. He had no whip; he couldn’t lash her as Preacher Cockerell had lashed his Maudey. Even then Tasmin was looking at him boldly, a little scared perhaps but not compliant, as a chastised wife should be. Jim made a fist, but then held back. He didn’t strike her.

  Tasmin saw the fist—she watched, rather numb, as battle raged within Jim Snow. His face had darkened. She could only wait, she couldn’t run; if she ran into the blizzard the best she could hope for was to lose a toe or two. If there was to be a beating, better to stay and take it. All the same she felt herself trembling as she watched fury darken her husband’s face. She didn’t look at Jim; she looked at nothing, said nothing. She hoped that if she held a strict neutrality the crisis might pass—and it did. Jim Snow relaxed his fist—his face slowly cleared. He seemed as numb as she was; he started. When his knee accidently brushed hers he jerked back, as if burned.

  When Tasmin thought it safe to speak she did so as gently as possible. An element of real danger had suddenly come into her union; she had become afraid of her husband, afraid that in him were angers she couldn’t anticipate or soothe. These angers might have little enough to do with her; still, she was the wife who was there to meet them. She didn’t like being fearful, and yet she was not sure that she understood Jim well enough to avoid setting him off.

  “You’ve just made me scared of you, Jim—that’s the most honest thing I can say,” Tasmin began. “I accept that you don’t like cursing, and that you disapprove of vanity.”

  “No, it’s that I don’t like you to talk!” Jim said— why would the woman keep on? “It’s prideful, the way you talk. The Utes don’t let their women babble like you do—a Ute man would likely cut your tongue out.”

  “I’m lucky I haven’t married a Ute man, then,” Tasmin said quietly. “I’m afraid speech is a habit I’m unlikely to be able to break. I was brought up in a talky family—I’ve been babbling, as you put it, from an early age. In England I was much admired for my wit, which I must say I enjoy employing. Silent is one thing I can’t honestly promise to be.”

  His fist came quicker than his palm; it struck Tasmin squarely in the temple and knocked her partway out of the lodge. She did not entirely lose consciousness, but her vision blurred for a moment—she scraped her knee on the frozen snow as she struggled back into the tent. The world had become gray, like a thick soup; Tasmin’s only thought was to crawl back under the robes and rest. The one thing that was clear was that her husband didn’t like her to talk; his tolerance in that regard had abruptly ended, leaving her with a split lip and a lump forming on her temple. The injustice of it overwhelmed her: she had only been trying to understand Jim’s feelings, so as to be a better wife! Tasmin began to sob—she could not stop the warm tears from flowing, although she knew Jim couldn’t be expected to like her crying, either. She longed so for Jim to comfort her, to talk to her normally—just that morning, they had been singing together! But then, as her vision cleared, she saw that this hope of comfort was in vain. Except for herself, their tent was empty. Blizzard or no blizzard, Jim Snow was gone—his gun, his bow, and his quiver were gone too.

  8

  Who but a haunt would come visiting…

  “UH-OH WHO is it, Kit?” Jim Bridger asked—in the dim blue light of the storm, the man all white with snow who suddenly pushed into their lodge seemed ghostlike, at least from what Jim knew of ghosts. Who but a haunt would come visiting in such a blizzard?

  Kit Carson was startled too—since old Hugh Glass’s return from the bounds of death all the trappers had become a little jumpy. Now a man all icicles and snow came pushing in out of a blizzard so severe that no normal man would attempt to travel in it; he and Jim Bridger had taken one look at the storm and decided to make do with jerky for another day.

  “Oh, wait—it’s Jimmy Snow—I recognize his gun,” Kit said.

  “Well, Jimmy—I’d say you picked a bad day to get res
tless,” Jim Bridger allowed to the guest.

  Jim Snow courteously tried to shake all the snow off himself without sending too much of it into the small campfire. Carson and Bridger, the youngest and the soberest of the trappers, prided themselves on their ability to live rough. The lodge was small and makeshift, and they seldom bothered to lay in extra firewood.

  “I ain’t restless,” Jim Snow said. “I just thought I’d visit.”

  Jim Bridger received this news skeptically. Jim Snow, the Sin Killer, was by far the least sociable trapper in the Rockies. No one could ever predict where he might turn up, though it would usually be somewhere west and north of Saint Louis.

  “You’re smart about directions, Jimmy,” Kit said. “I might could find your camp in a blow like this—but if I wasn’t lucky I’d miss it.”

  “How is that pretty wife of yours? She is a treat for the eyes,” Jim Bridger inquired. He distrusted his own grasp of manners, where married folk were concerned, but thought he might be permitted a polite inquiry.

  “I just hit her a good stout lick, to stop her chatter,” Jim Snow admitted.

  Bridger and Carson received this information in silence. The world of marriage was a world they knew not. That husbands and wives sometimes came to blows was a circumstance they had heard rumored. Among the native tribes, of course, women were frequently beaten; whether excessive chatter was a principal cause of these beatings they were not sure. Their own experience, not extensive, had so far been solely with native women; no beating had as yet been necessary.

  Privately, both Kit Carson and Jim Bridger admired Tasmin beyond all women—in both their daydreams and their night dreams she made frequent appearances. They considered her to be quite likely the fairest woman on earth. Now her husband, the Sin Killer, had walked out of a blizzard to inform them that he had just silenced his wife with a good stout lick. What could the man expect them to make of such startling information?

  “Silence is a comely thing, in a woman,” Jim Snow informed them. “Silence before the Lord. It’s in the Book.”

  Neither Carson nor Bridger could read—what was in the Book came to them in scraps here and there, at second hand.

  “My wife don’t know when to shut up,” Jim Snow continued—clearly Tasmin’s proclivity for talk was bothering Jimmy a good deal, but their roles in this matter left them feeling increasingly embarrassed. On a day of blizzard, when no man could see two feet in front of his face, Jim Snow had made his way to their lodge mainly in order to complain about his lovely wife.

  “Tasmin talks all the time,” he went on. “I had to crack her just to get a little peace.

  “Knocked her out of the tent—didn’t mean to,” he added.

  The two young trappers considered this information somberly. Neither man could imagine hitting Tasmin, much less knocking her all the way out of a tent. It was clear that Jim Snow was not entirely comfortable with what he had done—he had plunged into a blizzard in order to tell them about it, and now was looking at them expectantly, as if waiting for them to assure him that knocking a talky wife out of a tent was perfectly proper behavior in a husband, a judgment neither felt qualified to make.

  “I expect she’ll have a pretty fair lump on her noggin,” Jim Snow went on—he seemed unable to get his mind off the fact that he had struck his wife.

  “What is it she talks about, Jimmy?” Kit inquired cautiously. Excessive talk on Tasmin’s part seemed to be the heart of the problem; Kit felt it might be appropriate to inquire about the subjects she dealt with in her chatter.

  “Stuff—I can’t remember much,” Jim Snow confessed. In fact what Tasmin talked about was usually beyond his powers of description.

  “Sometimes she cusses,” he added. “That’s what started it today.”

  “A woman shouldn’t cuss,” Jim Bridger agreed.

  “Nope, it wouldn’t be good etiquette,” Kit Carson agreed. He had recently learned the word “etiquette” from Tasmin’s sister Bess, who had objected to his habit of spitting out gristle or other unsatisfactory foods while at the common table.

  Outside, the blizzard was moderating somewhat. The snow still swirled, but the wind blew less fiercely.

  “The blow’s about over,” Jim said. “If you see my wife tell her I’ll be gone for a while. I promised George Aitken I’d check on him and the boat once I got the folks safe at the post.”

  “You’re headed back to the Knife River now?” Jim Bridger asked, surprised. Both he and Kit felt that they had received a heavy commission. Neither trusted themselves to utter a word in Lady Tasmin’s presence.

  “Yes—I told George I’d come check on him when I got a chance,” Jim Snow said. “If the wrong bunch of Indians was to show up, it might go hard with George and the others.”

  “It might,” Kit Carson agreed.

  “Don’t forget to tell my wife where I’m going,” Jim Snow insisted. Then he slid out of the lodge and disappeared.

  “You go tell his wife, Kit,” Jim Bridger said at once.

  “No sir, not me,” Kit said. “You go—you’re far smoother with the womenfolks. I might spit in the wrong direction or do some other bad etiquette. You go.”

  After wrangling for an hour, during which the debate grew heated, they decided to draw straws, which they did later that day, at the trading post. Joe Walker held the straws.

  “Short straw tells her,” Kit said—the words were hardly out of his mouth before he drew the short straw.

  “That wasn’t a fair draw,” he protested. “Joe was jerky.”

  Jim Bridger, however, refused to redraw.

  Though oppressed by fears about his own shortcomings in the area of etiquette, there was nothing Kit could do but plod down to the Yellowstone and give Lady Tasmin the bad news.

  9

  The wind had become inconsistent…

  TASMIN sat in the chilly tent all day, well swaddled in robes, nursing her hurt. Though her lower lip was puffy and her head ached, the deeper hurts were inside. Her feelings swung back and forth, regularly as a pendulum. One minute she longed for her husband’s return—the next minute she feared that very event, for he might very well hit her again. The wind had become inconsistent as the blizzard lost its force. Several times, in moments of quiet, Tasmin convinced herself she heard footsteps. Twice she crawled out of the tent, hoping to spot Jim.

  In the afternoon the wind stopped blowing, the sky cleared, and the sun shone with unusual brilliance on the snowfields. Tasmin could have walked on to the fort and asked Cook for her porridge bath, but she didn’t—a lethargy seemed to take her; she merely sat, now and then putting a few sticks on the fire. At least Jimmy had left her plenty of firewood. Ordinarily she would have been ravenously hungry by that hour, but she didn’t feel hungry. She made little snowballs and applied them to her puffy lip and lumpy temple. When she did go to the fort she didn’t want any of her relatives to notice evidence of violence.

  Even when the sun began to sink, Tasmin continued to wait. She felt that to leave her tent just then might mean leaving her marriage, which, despite the day’s trouble, was a thing not wholly to be despised. There was little accounting for men’s tempers, it seemed. Her own father, unprovoked, often fell to slapping and whacking. Perhaps it was merely a flaw in the male temperament—perhaps Jim Snow had awakened to some obscure anxiety having to do with sin which, unwittingly, her profane chatter had exacerbated.

  It might be that enduring such unjust attacks was merely a part of women’s lot—her mother had sported many a black eye over the years, and yet, somehow, it had never occurred to Tasmin that a man would hit her. Now that one had she felt that her best bet was to achieve a better understanding of her man—perhaps if she could penetrate to the cave of her husband’s angers she would learn what set him off.

  It was nearly dusk when next Tasmin heard footsteps approaching the camp. They seemed rather timid footsteps—perhaps Cook had sent Eliza to see about her. But when Tasmin cautiously peeked out she saw Kit Carso
n standing nearby, evidently in deep perplexity of spirit. He wore a little rag cap, such as a shop boy might wear. Tasmin felt immediate relief. Kit was her favorite of the trappers; such a polite boy he was. Already Buffum, no longer nunlike, had conceived a passion for him.

  “Why, hello, Kit,” Tasmin said. “Were you looking for Jim?”

  “No,” Kit admitted. As usual Lady Tasmin’s beauty caused a paralyzing shyness to seize him. He knew exactly what he was supposed to say—he had rehearsed it many times in his walk from the post, but he could not bring himself, bumbler that he was, to launch into speech.

  Tasmin saw this—standing just by her tent, as the cold shadows of evening stretched over the snow-fields, the young man seemed incapable of either speech or action.

  It occurred to Tasmin that if she could just get him moving again he might make a useful escort. She no longer felt that leaving the tent meant leaving her marriage—that view was too dramatic. If she could persuade Kit to walk her to the post she might enjoy that porridge bath after all.

  “It’s a great convenience to me that you’ve been so thoughtful as to stop by,” Tasmin said. “Jimmy’s off somewhere and I was just heading for the post. I wonder if you would be so kind as to escort me—I’ll just get my little bag.”

  “Went to the boat,” Kit managed to say, as they started along the path.

  “What’s that?” she asked. “What about the boat?”

  “Jim, he gone to the boat—said to tell you not to worry,” Kit managed to bring out. “Said he had to go to the boat to see that George Aitken was all right.”

  Tasmin felt a flash of warmth—she had not been entirely forgotten, after all.

  “Jim came by our camp and told us—he didn’t want you to worry,” Kit added, his tongue loosening, rather to his surprise.

  “How nice of you to bring me this reassurance—he mentioned nothing of the sort to me,” she admitted.

  “Gone to the boat,” Kit said again—he clung to this simple piece of information as a drowning man might cling to a spar.